Olympic Lessons From Athens

The Greeks are feeling sorry for us Indians and the mess we made of the preparations leading up to the commonwealth games. Actually they have a lot to feel sorry about themselves these days, but they still commiserate with visiting Indians.  The ancient Greeks may have reached dizzying heights in every aspect of human endeavour but the modern Greeks are in the midst of the economic crisis and continue to be one of the worst affected nations. They have been forced to follow punishing austerity measures dictated by the IMF and European banks. They are being told by the dour bankers that they had no business building a welfare state, hosting the 2004 Olympics, and building up a $400 million debt.

So the weather is perfect, the Mediterranean sunlight magical, the olives possibly the best in the world, the country beautiful (and now at prices that have crashed), the antiquities really staggering, but the mood is sour. Every sixth shop in Athens appears to have downed shutters and gone out of business, there are strikes every second day, and a great anger and unrest is simmering. The resentment against IMF dictates and western capitalistic norms is growing. With the shoddy preparations for the games making world news, many Greeks imagine that the western media did us in by presenting an unflattering picture of the Delhi games to the world.

Their experience leading up to the Athens Olympics is instructive for us in India, although there are big differences too with this nation of 10 million. Before the Athens games the Greeks were hammered by the world media for being too inefficient, laid-back and corrupt to host the Olympics. Never mind the fact that the Olympic games have their origin in ancient Greece where they began as a series of competitions between city states in chariot racing, combat, athletics. In a post 9/11 world, sections of the western media simply saw Greece as vulnerable to terrorist attacks and just not able to get its act together. The British media in particular sent droves of reporters who mostly concluded that the Greeks were not up to it.

As it happens they were wrong and the Greeks did pull off a splendid Olympic games. But the lessons they learnt along the way and their experience is instructive for us. Dimitris Kaptanos covered the Athens games for the leading Greek daily. He says there was a lot of overspending, the public works minister was accused of corruption, and no one thought things would run smoothly. But they did because he says that "for 15 days Greece became a different country". The Greeks behaved themselves, did not enter the lanes meant for athletes and put on quite a show. But 15 days later it was "chaos" as usual which happens to be a word derived from Greek. Which is why Kaptanos with the easy robustness of the Greeks, dismisses the spectacular show by the Chinese at the opening of the Beijing Olympics. "It was a military parade," he says gesticulating and throwing up his hands, "we shall never know how they do things with such military precision..we Greeks we were dancing away but it had soul. Indians also have a soul so they make a mess of things."

Sudha Nair settled and married in Greece for a decade, publishes the Insider magazine from Athens and Istanbul. She says that people forget that the Games changed the way they Athenians commute. The metro, also a gift of the Games, is one of the smartest in the world. They faced an extraordinary challenge in Athens-wherever they dug they found antiquities. The planners did not know what to do. So they came up with the creative solution of showcasing the antiquities along the metro route and in stations. It is quite a feat.

There is a Greek saint called Aghios Para Pente who can be translated as the St of five minutes before or the saint of deadlines. What it means that the saint insures that when nothing is getting done, just five minutes before the deadline things will fall into place. A familiar attitude to all South Asians raised in the culture of jugaad which seems quite charming at times but also results in bridges collapsing and human beings dying, labourers not getting minimum wages while a privileged few siphon crores of public money.

P. Taboureos is a leading banker in Athens with many friends in India. He says that after the Olympics Greece remained in a state of euphoria for a while. First they won the European football cup and the same year the Eurovision song competition. It was all too good to be true. Then came the economic crash and the sunny world of the Greeks turned upside down. India, he says, is too large and powerful to be hit so hard.

The starkest difference is that while some Indians may indeed see the CWG in terms of national pride (lost or retrieved) many are just too poor to think of such lofty concepts as honour of a country.